Given McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said after June’s Canadian Grand Prix that “there’s no plans for any major upgrades”, the size of the upgrade package that first ran on Daniel Ricciardo’s car during FP1 at the French Grand Prix was a surprise.
The upgrade comprises a new reshaped sidepod, a new floor with improved diffuser performance and a new range of additional cooling options – as well as a reliability-driven change to the rear-wing endplates.
Seidl had left the door open for “further small little changes” when he said there would be no major upgrades after Canada, suggesting perhaps that this significant change is considered to be a minor one.
He said that these upgrades were always “part of the programme” for McLaren.
“There were some wrong headlines around based on my quote in Montreal because sometimes I have the impression some people go for clicks,” said Seidl.
“So I never said we don’t bring any upgrades anymore. That was always part of the programme we were in.
“We just need to decide now after having also clarity on the cost cap side how the rest of the season looks like. But it was always part of the plan to bring another upgrade.”
Ricciardo put the upgrade package through its paces during the first free practice session, with team-mate Lando Norris driving the old-specification for a back-to-back comparison. Norris has the upgrade for FP2 onwards.
The upgrade is expected to deliver a performance step thanks to a gain in downforce and nothing untoward was reported about its behaviour during the first session.
“After we brought our Barcelona package, obviously the entire team focused in the last month on bringing this next evolution of our current car concept to the track, with the main focus of just increasing downforce further,” said Seidl.
“I’m quite happy with the efforts from the entire team back home in order to deliver this package to here. The main focus is now on making sure we get to grips as quickly as possible with this new package, live the potential of it that we have seen back home as quickly as possible and then hopefully be in a position with this package to fight our main competitors in this battle for P4.
“The idea today was to fit it first to Daniel in the morning to do go through some quite specific programme in order to understand also in straight comparison with Lando still being on the old package of the steps we wanted to see. And then the plan is for the second session to have it installed to both cars.”
Seidl admitted that spares are “tight” for the team thanks to the new package, but that’s not unusual given the time and cost cap constraints.
While the recent resolution of the dispute about raising the cost cap to combat high inflation has eased the pressure on teams operating at the cost cap, as McLaren is, Seidl stressed that had no influence on this upgrade being given the green light given it was already in the works.
The Race understands that McLaren was reluctant to talk publicly about planned upgrades last month at a time when the debate about raising the spending limit was still being discussed.
Seidl left the door open to further upgrades this year, although like all teams McLaren must balance up its 2022 and ’23 development.
“If you look at the lead times of such parts, they obviously don’t fall out of the production within a matter of weeks,” said Seidl.
“It was always part of the development plan we had in place to bring an upgrade. It was more like making sure that when we actually committed to the package like it is now, do we get enough out of it compared to the money that we have to spend?
“That’s why we chose this race in terms of timing, [which is] different to some other teams that have brought some parts already earlier.
“The cost cap is now clear, we know where we are now in terms of the cost cap at the end of the year, so we know now what we have to work with.
“We need to see now how it goes here now with this new package, to see where we are in terms of competitiveness.
“Then see where we are with the cap and make our decisions on how the rest of the year looks like and then we switch completely to next year’s car.”
